"Relationship" is a metaphor because there is no actual, physical connection between mother and child, save for the umbilical cord. "Connection" is also metaphorical, I believe. Rather, to relate is an action performed by things. Turning the verb "relate" into a noun by adding the suffix "ship" does not signify some other thing, but is used in abstracto to describe mother and child relating to one another.

I call myself an object because I fit the definition, at least according to the hard sciences. I have a boundary; I move as one; I occupy a position in space and time; and so on.

The brute facts are important for politics because one requires a political unit or subject to value. The fascist, for instance, would value the State and give it primacy in all matters political, and is willing to sacrifice flesh-and-blood individuals for its sake. The Marxist would do the same for the Proletariat. The liberal or republican would do it for the People or the Res publica. The National Socialist would do it for the Race. Collectivism is a tried-and-true method for justifying atrocity and injustice. Worse, their demand for the subordination of the individual to some notion of the collective proves that it is not about the collective at all, but about subordinating certain segments and individuals of the collective to others.

I don't think I have poisoned the well with the Law of Oligarchy because Michels' is concerned with systematic organizations and not the spontaneous familial relationships and other aggregates of human beings. His book is called Political Parties, after all. But I guess its an interesting question if any aggregate of human beings can be considered an organization. if you want to get into it, it's clear that the relationship of mother and child, or the bourgeois family, are not democracies by any stretch of the imagination.

It's true that human beings and other primates are gregarious. But you are a single object. The last dyad you or I have ever experienced ended when the umbilical cord was severed. Any and all attachments are strictly metaphorical. To me it's patently false to treat aggregates of any number of human beings as single objects, so I'm a strict nominalist in that regard. I can't get around it and I can't help but fashion my politics around what I see as brute facts.

For these reasons I believe any effort to give a group priority over the individuals in it—collectivism—is to prioritize ideas over actuality, and worse, one's own ideas and nothing more. It is never about the collective qua collective, nor could it be.

I don't see social interactions, conversations, and natural groupings as organizations because they are not arranged systematically and artificially. They are not organized.

I don’t get why people push back against it because everyone we organize with is an individual. If you only see them as a means to some collective end, then it is their subordination rather than their cooperation you require. I fear that holding abstractions over and above actual flesh-and-blood individuals justifies the worst of humanity, and is egotism of the highest order.

We can quibble about how ferrous his law is. It just seems to me that if oligarchy wasn’t inevitable, and the law not so iron, that we’d see some solid examples proving otherwise. Maybe someone can provide one and we can weigh it to the countless examples supporting Michels theory, but I don't even know if that's necessary.

Michels' thesis that "with the advance of organization, democracy tends to decline", and "where organization is stronger, we find that there is a lesser degree of applied democracy", stands more solid than the gaseous notion that the state is potentially democratic. If oligarchy is not inevitable, how long do we have to wait for its opposite?

Harth dropped the lawsuit right after Trump settled an outstanding business lawsuit from her partner. Weird how that happens.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/20/donald-trump-sexual-assault-allegations-jill-harth-interview

Ivana walked back the allegation back in 93:

“During a deposition given by me in connection with my matrimonial case, I stated that my husband had raped me,” Ivana Trump said in a statement at the time, as the Daily Beast reported. "[O]n one occasion during 1989, Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage. As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a 'rape,' but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense."

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/donald-trumps-wife-ivana-disavows-rape-allegation/story?id=32732204

Why aren’t you mentioning these things?

Look at the date of their accusations. October 2016. Why are you lying?

As with Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby it's:
He said; she said. And she said, and she said, and she said ...

All after he became a political target of the highest order. Just a big coincidence, I guess.

@Banno is a collectivist. Given his inclination he sees hierarchies of power and the structure of a political party as folks working together.

I don’t doubt for a second that the Adult Survivors Act was designed to allow E. Jean Carrol an opportunity to attack Trump before the election, a scheme as political as it is unjust.

The act was introduced by Senator Hoylman-Sigal, known as he is to use legislation to persecute Trump, proving to me that bending the law is the only way to make it seem like the president broke it. Political from conception to use. According to E Jean Carrols lawyer they had much to do with it as well. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was about principle, but the tiny window of one year proves it’s about expediency. Maybe they realized how dangerous it is to to forgo the statute of limitations entirely, but their hatred ran hotter than their sense of justice.

They are going to hang them on gallows too small and weak to be used. Fact is, people often erect mock gallows at protests.

Then the very structure of your organization and path to democracy betrays your goals. Your organization requires hierarchy, the rule of the few, in the conservative tradition. Now it is just a matter of who is more honest about it.

Wrong again. It was an unusual voir dire, which I assume was designed to protect the identities of the jurors. Protect them from delusional Trump supporters. Trump supporters often don't have a good grasp on reality and have been known to be violent when things don't go their way.

It's a self-fulfilling prophesy. Treat unjustly a group of people and then get angry when they get mad. The logic of petty tyrants.

None of your straw-grasping can contend with the fact no evidence of any sexual assault or admission of any sexual assault occurred in the video. All sexual assault has been explicitly denied. He said; she said. You: She said, therefor he did. I just don't follow it.

As for the jury selection it was an anonymous jury. No lawyers had access to them during the process, therefor no voir dire.

True enough. But they wouldn’t have coercive political power. And I think cooperation could beat out organization any day. I’m not sure if this is true or not but I do believe a voluntary army could stick it to a slave army.

I do appreciate all the attention but I'm far more interested in your opinion on the topic. Can you think of a way around the Iron Law of Oligarchy? Or would you admit, like the conservatives do, that the very structure of your organization requires a hierarchy of betters and lessers, elites and the masses, masters and slaves?

You would think that Trumps lawyers would have done better in the jury selection process. I hear he only hires the best people.

There was no jury selection process. Such a fair trial.

If you can show where someone in the trial claimed that the video proves that Trump sexually assaulted a woman then do so.

Are you saying that I think that others believe Trump assaulted someone in the video?

Do you think that when "they let you do it", it is assault?

What I seem to think to you can be contrasted to what I actually do think: Nowhere does he admit to any assault in the video. Nowhere has assault been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. That's it. All there is are accusation, all of which can be seriously doubted.

It was literally presented as evidence in a rape trial. I don’t get what you’re saying here.

Who knows? If organization tends to oligarchy, disorganize. That’s probably a good start.

A direct quote from E Jean Carrol trial regarding the video:

“He's telling you in his own words how he treats women. It's his modus operandi.”

I don’t understand the weird evasions here.

The same video was submitted as evidence in the E Jean Carrol trial to show a pattern of Trump’s behavior.

Yes, they appear to believe he grabs women by the pussy, that this video proves it, despite there being no admission nor no evidence that he does. Clear enough for you?

I agree with you there. But I think that's his point. I'm sure he is noting how this is giving ideological ammunition to the conservatives. After all, this whole work is a warning to his own party. It's was my fault due to misquote, by leaving out the preceding sentance:

"The sociological phenomena whose general characteristics have been discussed in this chapter and in preceding ones offer numerous vulnerable points to the scientific opponents of democracy."

I'll add it to the OP.

You're claiming that "cult members" watched this video and came to believe that Trump sexually assaults every woman that he comes into contact with?

I said "cult member" in parody because someone else used it in reference to those who do not find any evidence that he assaulted someone.

Nonetheless, many people claim he is admitting to assault. They even claimed it in the E. Jean Carrol's trial and that it showed a pattern. The jury obviously believed it. Except there is no such admission, and neither can they point to any sexual assault he has admitted to.

Nope. I'm saying from the video that his actions do not match his boasts, and its stupid to believe that it does. He neither latches on to her like a magnet, without waiting, and starts kissing her. It was boasting.

Not really the topic for En Vogue references, but I’m a big fan.

He was saying what you can get away when you’re a star, not what he does when he meets people. But it was in the context of meeting the woman standing just outside.

Democracy is always the alternative. It’s just that we cannot reach it through collectivist calculations and means.

I think that is the key, in the end. Rather than wasting time devising a collectivist system that ought to deliver the rule of the people (an absurdity, as Michels shows), which in practice is oligarchy, the people just need to go rule themselves.

The fact is, he supported Mussolini. If he thought that Mussolini and/or fascism could lead to democracy he was wrong.

Are you suggesting that Trump's autocratic demography delivers democracy?

Many people did. Clearly he was wrong.

I’m suggesting that democracy is impossible where certain organizational structures are concerned, for instance representative government.

Exactly right. Democracy is only achievable outside of representational government. And I do not think we need to go backwards in order to remove the shackles of another’s rule. In the meantime I guess we can pretend it is democracy, protect our “democratic institutions”, and go on as if we’re not serfs for the time being.

You can watch it on video. The woman he was speaking about greets him at the door of the bus.

I don’t, save for its collectivism. Michels did, though. He was in the milieu.

He clearly admits in the first-person what he does. As for grabbing pussy, he’s clearly speaking in the second person. You have neither the incident nor the admission, but you believe both occured.

You can watch it on video directly after he was speaking about her. But I wouldn’t want you to betray your own senses.

Michels was an ardent socialist and believed Fascism would deliver democracy.

Good thinking.

Just to be clear, I didn’t mean they favor oligarchy, but that their organization necessarily tends in that direction, no matter what type of organization they prefer.

It also seems to me that the Republican style of representational government was designed, as it was in the founding fathers of the United States, to forbid the excesses of democracy. Given that many governments since then have styled their governments in the Republican fashion—Union of Soviet Republics, People’s Republic of China, Italian Social Republic—it was almost inevitable that there would be no democracy.

Claim: "Yeah that's her with the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

Fact: He does not grab by the pussy the woman he was just talking about.

Cult Members: "He grabs them by the pussy!"

It’s true. I think he is the victim here and my bias is evident. But so is everyone else’s. This includes the DA’s and AG’s in New York and Georgia, or federal prosecutor Jack Smith. You can go on Twitter and observe his anti-Trumpism. It’s political animus all the way down. The difference is I’m not in charge of the law.

My presumption of innocence has yet to be affected by any of the countless, myriad accusations he has received since he came down that escalator. They are using the justice system to engage in lawfare, and the ease with which they can do it makes the system a bloody joke.